My grandfather was born the day before St. Patrick's Day, 1893 at the German-American farming town of Cologne, MN, the fourth of five sons and four daughters born to George Gehrig and his wife Bertha (Guettler). I was blessed to know him as a child through summer trips in the 1960s and early 1970s to visit both sets of grandparents in Duluth, MN, where he had moved his family in 1942 from Minneapolis. Grampa lost his father at 20 and I remember the calm, accepting way he told a young boy the (amazing) story of how he and another brother assisted the undertaker to embalm his father in their farmhouse parlor. Around that time, Grampa went to work for the The Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad, better known as "Milwaukee Road", a Class I railroad that operated in the Midwest and Northwest of the United States from 1847 until 1986. A distant cousin of the famed NY Yankee of the same surname, Paul Gehrig also loved baseball and was a talented pitcher for the Cologne Maple Leafs, and might have gone on to play professionally but for the proverbial shoulder injury.
His first few years were spent working as a telegrapher at the tiny train station in Cologne, MN, where he was born. His WWI draft registration lists that job and that he supported his widowed mother, Bertha. In the summer of 1917, he married my grandmother, Marcella Hund, six years his junior. On March 21, 1918, a month before their first child, Leo, was born, my Grampa enlisted in the Navy. Because he was a skilled telegrapher, he was sent to the the US Naval Radio School that was launched the year before in Cambridge, Ma , where it occupied Harvard campus buildings for classrooms. My grandfather, like many in his generation, did not "go to college", but he told me with characteristic twinkle in his blue eyes, that whenever anyone asked, he told them he was "a Harvard man". And so he was, graduating from radio school with a "yard long" graduation photo holding his Springfield '03 rifle to prove it.
World War One was winding down when Grampa finished service school, and he was discharged to home in early 1919 as a radioman second class, without joining a ship in the fleet.
, of telling those who inquired about his matriculation,
and, somewhat controversially, erected a temporary ba…
Those we love don't go away,
They walk beside us every day,
Unseen, unheard, but always near,
Still loved, still missed, and very dear.
So much has changed since you've been gone, through ups and downs our lives move on,
But as time rolls by one thing remains true,
We'll always have memories of you.
Military Information: RM2, US NAVY
His first few years were spent working as a telegrapher at the tiny train station in Cologne, MN, where he was born. His WWI draft registration lists that job and that he supported his widowed mother, Bertha. In the summer of 1917, he married my grandmother, Marcella Hund, six years his junior. On March 21, 1918, a month before their first child, Leo, was born, my Grampa enlisted in the Navy. Because he was a skilled telegrapher, he was sent to the the US Naval Radio School that was launched the year before in Cambridge, Ma , where it occupied Harvard campus buildings for classrooms. My grandfather, like many in his generation, did not "go to college", but he told me with characteristic twinkle in his blue eyes, that whenever anyone asked, he told them he was "a Harvard man". And so he was, graduating from radio school with a "yard long" graduation photo holding his Springfield '03 rifle to prove it.
World War One was winding down when Grampa finished service school, and he was discharged to home in early 1919 as a radioman second class, without joining a ship in the fleet.
, of telling those who inquired about his matriculation,
and, somewhat controversially, erected a temporary ba…
Those we love don't go away,
They walk beside us every day,
Unseen, unheard, but always near,
Still loved, still missed, and very dear.
So much has changed since you've been gone, through ups and downs our lives move on,
But as time rolls by one thing remains true,
We'll always have memories of you.
Military Information: RM2, US NAVY
My grandfather was born the day before St. Patrick's Day, 1893 at the German-American farming town of Cologne, MN, the fourth of five sons and four daughters born to George Gehrig and his wife Bertha (Guettler). I was blessed to know him as a child through summer trips in the 1960s and early 1970s to visit both sets of grandparents in Duluth, MN, where he had moved his family in 1942 from Minneapolis. Grampa lost his father at 20 and I remember the calm, accepting way he told a young boy the (amazing) story of how he and another brother assisted the undertaker to embalm his father in their farmhouse parlor. Around that time, Grampa went to work for the The Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad, better known as "Milwaukee Road", a Class I railroad that operated in the Midwest and Northwest of the United States from 1847 until 1986. A distant cousin of the famed NY Yankee of the same surname, Paul Gehrig also loved baseball and was a talented pitcher for the Cologne Maple Leafs, and might have gone on to play professionally but for the proverbial shoulder injury.
His first few years were spent working as a telegrapher at the tiny train station in Cologne, MN, where he was born. His WWI draft registration lists that job and that he supported his widowed mother, Bertha. In the summer of 1917, he married my grandmother, Marcella Hund, six years his junior. On March 21, 1918, a month before their first child, Leo, was born, my Grampa enlisted in the Navy. Because he was a skilled telegrapher, he was sent to the the US Naval Radio School that was launched the year before in Cambridge, Ma , where it occupied Harvard campus buildings for classrooms. My grandfather, like many in his generation, did not "go to college", but he told me with characteristic twinkle in his blue eyes, that whenever anyone asked, he told them he was "a Harvard man". And so he was, graduating from radio school with a "yard long" graduation photo holding his Springfield '03 rifle to prove it.
World War One was winding down when Grampa finished service school, and he was discharged to home in early 1919 as a radioman second class, without joining a ship in the fleet.
, of telling those who inquired about his matriculation,
and, somewhat controversially, erected a temporary ba…
Those we love don't go away,
They walk beside us every day,
Unseen, unheard, but always near,
Still loved, still missed, and very dear.
So much has changed since you've been gone, through ups and downs our lives move on,
But as time rolls by one thing remains true,
We'll always have memories of you.
Military Information: RM2, US NAVY
His first few years were spent working as a telegrapher at the tiny train station in Cologne, MN, where he was born. His WWI draft registration lists that job and that he supported his widowed mother, Bertha. In the summer of 1917, he married my grandmother, Marcella Hund, six years his junior. On March 21, 1918, a month before their first child, Leo, was born, my Grampa enlisted in the Navy. Because he was a skilled telegrapher, he was sent to the the US Naval Radio School that was launched the year before in Cambridge, Ma , where it occupied Harvard campus buildings for classrooms. My grandfather, like many in his generation, did not "go to college", but he told me with characteristic twinkle in his blue eyes, that whenever anyone asked, he told them he was "a Harvard man". And so he was, graduating from radio school with a "yard long" graduation photo holding his Springfield '03 rifle to prove it.
World War One was winding down when Grampa finished service school, and he was discharged to home in early 1919 as a radioman second class, without joining a ship in the fleet.
, of telling those who inquired about his matriculation,
and, somewhat controversially, erected a temporary ba…
Those we love don't go away,
They walk beside us every day,
Unseen, unheard, but always near,
Still loved, still missed, and very dear.
So much has changed since you've been gone, through ups and downs our lives move on,
But as time rolls by one thing remains true,
We'll always have memories of you.
Military Information: RM2, US NAVY
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